Our new website

Maureen and I have  new website and have been busy setting it up.  I love a challenge and designing your own website is certainly one of them :-)


www.marieandmaureen.co.nz

My new midwifery partner

WOW!  Where does a month go?  We are nearly at the end of September and Spring is here.  I am so pleased that I have a new midwifery partner Maureen (please see our web site www.mariethemidwife.net introducing her).  Maureen is a very experienced midwife who, until recently worked at Whangarei hospital.  We share the same philosophies and both of us are passionate about our love of midwifery and working for the family/whanau. 

We will both be contributing articles to the blog as we go along.  That will make up for the last couple of months when it has been really busy for me that I have been unable to get a blog written

:-)  

Pregnancy Art and Belly Casting

 I love looking at spiritual art, especially when it depicts the sacred art of birth and motherhood.    The mother and her unborn baby have a unique connection which develops as both journey through life together.  

I came across these lovely pictures while searching the internet, you can go to see the full gallery from the link below the pictures.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/kmberggren

Belly casting

I wish belly casting had been around when I was pregnant with my kids.  I think belly casting is a great idea and what a wonderful thing to keep for when the children get older :-) 

I have pasted a couple of examples here, follow the link for more information if you are interested.

http://www.paperbelly.co.nz/

Laughing gas for ladies in labour

I came across this article and thought ladies  may be interested :  the UK and NZ have been using entonox/nitronox for quite some decades and it is a good form of pain relief.  It is news to me that it is not used in the United States, ah, I see that it is used in Canada.  Any US midwives reading this blog?

Laughing gas for ladies in labor

Posted by Maggie Koerth-Baker on Tuesday, May 24th at 9:33am

Apparently, nitrous oxide—the stuff they give you at the dentist—is a safe anesthetic to use on women who are giving birth. Pretty surprising to this American. I've always generally had the impression that gas was dangerous for pregnant ladies—in fact, I've had dentists who wouldn't let pregnant nurses administer nitrous to me. But the case made in this Slate article by Libby Copeland sounds well-supported by evidence. Even more interesting, none of this is likely to raise eyebrows in Europe, where lots of women have used nitrous during labor for decades.

So why isn't this normal in America? From the sounds of things, it's a combination of a difference in mid-century medical culture, and some really bad timing.

The gas was first used on laboring moms in the 1880s and came into more widespread use in the 1930s, when a series of technical advances in Great Britain made it easier for laboring women to self-administer through a mask. Nitrous is still used widely in other countries' delivery rooms: According to data parsed by nurse-midwife and former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist Judith Rooks, well over half of laboring women sampled in the United Kingdom use nitrous oxide today. In other places, including Finland and the Canadian province of British Columbia, close to half of women use it.

Why don't we have it here? As the Associated Press has reported, only a handful of American hospital delivery rooms still offer nitrous to laboring women. It was more widely available in this country from the '30s through the '50s, says pediatrician Mark Sloan, author of Birth Day, but several factors blunted its popularity. For some reason, Sloan says, the idea of women self-administering nitrous oxide didn't catch on here the way it did in England, where midwives started towing nitrous around with them to home births. In the United States, by contrast, hospital deliveries were the norm, and doctors and nurses were told to deliver nitrous by holding a mask over a laboring woman's face with each contraction. When, in the '50s and '60s two rival inhalational anesthetics came along, both of them less time-consuming to administer, they elbowed nitrous oxide out of the way. It later turned out these rivals were dangerous, but just when nitrous might have been poised to make a comeback, the epidural arrived on the scene.

Copeland points out that, unlike an epidural, nitrous doesn't so much eliminate pain as make you not really care that pain is happening. That rings true for me. Personally, I credit nitrous with getting me over a paralyzing fear of needles. Back in junior high, I once panicked and tried to run during an MMR booster, and nearly got the needle broken off in my arm. But in college, when I faced my first cavities, my then-dentist suggested nitrous. I still felt the shot. But I didn't feel the terror, and the nitrous made the pain of the shot seem like not such a big deal. Today, when I get a cavity, I don't even use the gas any more. I'm still probably more anxious about shots than the average person, but the gas really helped me break down the mental block I had, so I can actually get the medical treatment I need now.

I doubt shots are really a good metaphor for the pain of childbirth, but the pain of childbirth certainly is scary to a lot of women. If you don't think you want an epidural, but do want something to take the edge off, nitrous does sound like it could be a nice third option—somewhere between toughing it out and using effective painkillers that have the unfortunate side-effect of preventing you from walking around or peeing on your own. Women are different, and have different needs. It would be nice if they had more than two ways to deal with labor pain.

http://boingboing.net/2011/05/24/laughing-gas-for-lad.html

Back in New Zealand

We are now back in beautiful New Zealand after a wonderful time away.  Weather was absolutely beautiful abroad and where the temperatures were in the high 30 degrees, came back to Auckland where it was the coldest day for 16 years :-) Ah well, it will soon be Spring and where the earth begins to warm, perfect bliss.

Seeing my Grandson

I am in England at the moment visiting my wonderful family.  My Grandson, Luke is just beautiful, well done to Graham and Sophie and to my daughter Lynda and her partner, Gary.  The weather is just perfect, which is a bonus for England :-)

Darkening of the skin in pregnancy

This is very common in pregnancy.  Skin darkening is caused by the effects of your hormones stimulating melanocytes production which causes pigmentation patches on the skin.  On the face, it is called Chloasma and used to be called the 'mask of pregnancy.'   Freckles, scars, and areas on your face can darken.  On the abdomen it is called the linea nigra where a dark line develops from the umbilicus down to the pubis area.  The arerola (dark area) of the breasts will also darken.

It does not harm you in any way and usually disappears several months after you have your baby.

Will I get stretch marks?
A common question that women ask.  Striae gavidarum or stretch marks occur usually on the breasts, abdomen and thighs of the pregnant woman. Unfortunately, what is not known is what women will get them and what women will not.  Stretch marks are caused by the elastic collagen tissue under the skin stretching and tearing and forming red stripes over the abdomen.


The good news is that after you have the baby, the marks will fade and eventually becomes faint silvery lines, although unfortunately the skin texture will always be there. 

I have been trying to find some online research about the use of olive oil/cocoa butter etc., helping to reduce the risk of stretch marks but no evidence has proven conclusive.  Vitamin E is a vitamin that is found in certain skin pregnancy products and is said to help with the repair scar tissue.  Here is a link to a website that explains stretch marks, they also give a list of foods that contains vitamin E. 

http://www.allaboutstretchmarks.com/VitaminE.htm 



http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/problems/medical/melasma.htm